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Friday, September 5, 2008

Recovery of COMET P/2001 R1 = 2008 Q4 (LONEOS)

The Electronic Telegram No. 1490, published by the CBAT on September 1, announced that M. Jaeger (Stixendorf, Austria) recovered P/2001 R1 (LONEOS) on 2008, Aug. 31.08719. He described the object as having a small coma and a tail about 3' in PA 275 deg.

After reading a comment of Jaeger, posted in the newsgroup [Comets-ml] about his recovery of this comet, we performed some follow-up observations of this object, remotely from Pedara (Italy) through the "Skylive" 0.3-m, f/6 reflector + CCD. Co-adding of 14 unfiltered exposures, 120 seconds each, obtained on 2008 September 1.1, showed the presence of a small coma, nearly 10 arcsec in diameter, of about magnitude 16.8, and a tail nearly 40 arcsec long, toward PA 280 deg.

3 comments:

Hello and congratulations to all of you on this recovery. I was just reading and studying IAUC 8970 and MPEC 2008-R09 this morning and comparing the before and after positions using the old elements of P/2001 R1 and the new elements P/2008 Q4 in TheSky6 and see that this one was just half of my field of view away on my settup. So it gives me hope for future searches. I have tried for 85P several times and others with no success.

Whatever Michael is doing, its working!!!! And your followup observations I have been reading about are to be commended.

And thanks for your site and updates here. I read them and appreciate it.

Comets & Asteroids news

Welcome to our Astronomy blog, devoted in particular to Comets & Asteroids and related topics. This blog is maintained by Italian amateur astronomer Ernesto Guido, particularly active in the study of the small bodies of the Solar System.